Brave Police Officer Dies in a Gunfire

Randolph Holder was killed in a confrontation with an armed suspect in East Harlem on Tuesday.

Officers responded to a report of gunshots fired near East 102nd Street and 1st Avenue at about 8:30 p.m., in East Harlem New York City.

Holder and other plainclothes officers encountered a man on a bike on a pedestrian overpass over the FDR Drive. An exchange of gunfire happened when the brave police officer was struck in the head. He was immediately taken to Harlem Hospital in very critical condition. But he died there.

While the suspect was shot in the leg and was taken to Cornell Hospital. He will be handed over to police by Wednesday.

The 33-year-old Randolph Holder is a native of Guyana. He had five years experience and worked in the anti-crime unit of PSA no. 5, a command that guards New York City Public Housing developments in East Harlem and Harlem. His father and his grandfather were both police officers in Guyana.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said that “This whole city is in mourning, mourning a man who gave his life as a guardian for all of us and we’re humbled by Officer Randolph Holder’s example, an example of service and courage and sacrifice.”

“I extend our deepest condolences to his family,” Said Bill Bratton Commissioner NYPD. “Especially to his father, who in his time of grief sought to comfort the officers from PSA 5. He was strong enough and brave enough to go in and address them. As they tried to comfort him, he, in fact, was comforting them.”